But what exactly constitutes a foolish controversy? What seems logical and beautiful to one may seem to a simpler person to be idle speculation. Indeed, there is a strong anti-intellectual trend which treats any systematization of theology beyond what is necessary for daily life as a foolish controversy. But practical applicability to ethical situations cannot be the standard by which fruitfulness is decided, for is not an appreciation of the beauty of God an end in itself, without regard to behavior? God demands our affections, not just our behavior. To stifle the rigorous application of logic to scripture is to close an avenue by which God captures the imagination and therefore affection.

Instead, my goal here is to develop the Lutheran boundary between fruitful inquiry and worthless speculation, vaguely alluded to in Bondage of the Will, with Hayekian categories propounded in The Theory of Complex Phenomena – specifically with regard to questions probing into the will of God.

In the first place, we must be clear on what we are talking about. The moral will of God is perfectly clear in a way that the particular will of God is not:

We must discuss God, or the will of God, preached, revealed, offered to us, and worshipped by us, in one way, and God not preached, nor revealed, nor offered to us, nor worshipped by us, in another way. . . .

Now, God in his own nature and majesty is to be left alone; in this regard, we have nothing to do with him, nor does he wish us to deal with him. We have to deal with him as clothed and displayed in his word, by which he presents himself to us. That is his glory and beauty, in which the Psalmist proclaims him to be clothed (Ps. 21:5). . . . God preached works to the end that sin and death may be taken away, and that we may be saved. . . .

But God hidden in majesty neither deplores nor takes away death, but works life and death, and all in all; nor has he set bounds to himself by his word, but has kept himself free over all things.

. . . God does many things which he does not show us in his word, and he wills many things which he does not in his word show us that he wills. Thus, he does not will the death of a sinner – that is, in his word; but he wills it by his inscrutable will. At present, however, we must keep in view his word and leave alone his inscrutable will; for it is by his word, and not by his inscrutable will, that we must be guided. In any case, who can direct himself according to a will that is inscrutable and incomprehensible? (pp. 169-171)

The distinction seems to be that the will of God Preached, that is of the Word of God, is clear enough to be discussed, but that the secret will of God, by which all things pass, should be left quite alone. He continues shortly thereafter,

I say, as I said before, that we may not debate the secret will of Divine Majesty, and that the recklessness of man, who shows unabated perversity in leaving necessary matters for an attempted assault on that will, should be withheld and restrained from employing itself in searching out those secrets of Divine Majesty; for man cannot attain unto them, seeing that, as Paul tells us (cf. 1 Tim. 6:16), they dwell in inaccessible light. But let man occupy himself with God incarnate, that is, with Jesus crucified, in whom, as Paul says (cf. Col. 2:3), are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (though hidden); for by him man has abundant instruction both in what he should and in what he should not know.(pp. 175-176)

But Luther certainly says things about the secret will of God. In addition to the third paragraph of the first blockquote above, he says that “The Christian’s chief and only comfort in every adversity lies in knowing that God does not lie, but brings all things to pass immutably, and that his will cannot be resisted, altered, or impeded” (p. 84). Nor do the scriptures themselves shy away from making statements like “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose,” which seems like a general statement about the secret will of God.

The difference, of course, will be noted. To inquire into the moral will of God Preached is to apply general principles to specific situations, which if they do not uniquely determine an answer at least suggest a course of action. It may be profitably asked, “what would it look like to turn the other cheek in this situation?”, or “would buying a larger house demonstrate a lust of the flesh?”. What we can say about the secret will of God, however, though substantial, is not of such an immediately applicable nature. Given the fact that the secret will of God works all things for good to those who love him, it cannot be assumed that this principle will work in any particular way.

This distinction comports well with Hayek’s distinction between simple and complex phenomena: “The minimum number of elements of which an instance of the pattern must consist in order to exhibit all the characteristic attributes of the class of patterns in question appears to provide an unambiguous criterion.” That is, the more variables involved in the application of a theory to a particular instance, the more complex it is.

Hence, given the relatively small scope of the information which the human mind can correlate at one time, the principles in the Word of God are relatively simple. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind” has no variables at all. If there is a question as to whether this command applies, the answer is yes. Even more difficult questions, such as the definition of murder (is killing in self defense murder?), at most add one more variable to a question which already involves only one. There may be debates on what precisely the variables involved are, but no answer will involve more than a few. The human cannot be morally responsible for what he cannot conceive.¹

On the other hand, a more complex phenomenon than the operation of the secret will of God cannot be imagined. The relevant variables are, quite literally, all of them. To determine specifically, not only whose good any particular circumstance works for but in what manner it works that good, would involve vastly more knowledge than any human mind is capable of correlating.

Hayek notes that “Such a theory [of a complex phenomenon] will . . . be one of small empirical content, because it enables us to predict or explain only certain general features of a situation which may be compatible with a great many particular circumstances. . . . In any case the range of phenomena compatible with it will be wide and the possibility of falsifying it correspondingly small.” Thus, the more complex a phenomenon, the smaller the range of particular phenomena will be ruled out by a theory as to its operation. The inclusion of everything under the sovereign will of God, being the most complex imaginable phenomenon, must thus be tautologically compatible with every observed particular circumstance. This denies Romans 8:28 the title of a scientific theory, which it never purported to be in the first place, but merely shows that the applicability of Hayek’s principles do not necessarily limit themselves to the strictly scientific.

The takeaway then, is that though we can know (and scripture reveals to us) patterns which emerge in the operation of the secret will of God, this pattern will rarely be recognizable as such. Its application to particular circumstances constitutes prying, as Luther put it. In the first place, the good being worked for is a spiritual good. The working of the Holy Spirit makes that good independent of circumstance. Though God indeed often works through circumstance as a proximate cause, it is not a necessary cause. To misunderstand that good as a material or circumstantial good is to invite such errors as a prosperity gospel. Furthermore, to attempt an application to particular events is an irrelevant exercise in falsification. The good of the elect will be accomplished regardless of our ability to comprehend it, and to try despite our inability is only to invite disappointment when our expectations do not pan out. “The validity of this general proposition is not dependent on the truth of the particular applications which were first made of it.”²

Luther argued that there are knowable principles by which the secret will of God operates, yet strongly condemned inquiry into its particulars. It would seem then that Luther, in drawing the boundary between profitable and useless theological inquiry, abided by and roughly anticipated (even if he did not articulate) the distinctions which Hayek found necessary to draw between the methods of the sciences dealing with phenomena of varying complexity. This keen awareness of the limits of what knowledge the mind can synthesize gave Hayek “an attitude of humility and reverence towards that experience of mankind as a whole that has been precipitated in the values and institutions of existing society,” a reverence which Luther would more rightly direct to God.

1. As Hayek notes in another work (The Constitution of Liberty (1960), p. 83), moral responsibility must “refer only to such effects of his conduct as it is humanly possible for him to foresee and to such as we can reasonably wish hum to take into account in ordinary circumstances. To be effective, responsibility must be both defined and limited, adapted both emotionally and intellectually to human capacities.”
2. Hayek continues, with regard to the theory of natural selection: “If, for example, it should have turned out that, in spite of their structural similarity, man and ape were not joint descendants from a comparatively near common ancestor but were the product of two convergent strands starting from ancestors which differed much more from each other (such as is true of the externally very similar types of marsupial and placental carnivores), this would not have refuted Darwin’s general theory of evolution but only the manner of its application to the particular case.”

If you’re doing what you’re doing for reward and punishment, it’s not really morality.

-Penn Jillette

I’ve seen this trope more than once in Atheist circles, that traditional religious morality is somehow less moral for being reward-oriented. Atheists, it is contended, are more moral for doing the right thing – not for reward’s sake, but just because it’s right.

Ok then, what makes something right? What’s the difference between a good husband and a douchebag? Why would someone choose the option that atheists and Christians would probably agree is the “right” one?

Presumably the difference is (if we want to chalk it up to morality) that the good husband finds his wife’s happiness a reward and her displeasure a punishment. The other is indifferent. And if he finds her displeasure a reward, he’s an abuser. This is the essence of caring for another person. So even if we assume a substantial agreement between Christians and atheists on what is right among people and take that as given, the question of a moral action isn’t, “are you doing it for a reward?”; it’s, “what reward are you doing it for?”

Mainstream Christianity, no doubt, somewhat schizophrenically alternates between reward morality and categorical imperative “because God said so” morality. But as C.S. Lewis noted, “If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith.” To use the ideal of “right for right’s sake” as a gotcha, contrasted with a reward motivation, doesn’t really say anything except that atheists must be rather aimless. If their goal is not to redefine reward, but to be unmotivated by reward at all, then they will have a hard time with any purposeful action.

Obviously, though, atheists act. They take pleasure in things. They even genuinely care for other people. So if, given enough explanation, Penn’s ideas of morality turn out to be reward-based after all, doesn’t that soundbite misrepresent what atheism is? As pleasing as I’m sure it is to fluster the unsuspecting Christian with it, surely after a bit of thought it reflects worse on the atheist who repeats it…

According to [Calvinistic theory], the one great offence of man is self-will. All the good of which humanity is capable is comprised in obedience. You have no choice; thus you must do, and no otherwise: “whatever is not a duty, is a sin.” Human nature being radically corrupt, there is no redemption for any one until human nature is killed within him. To one holding this theory of life, crushing out any of the human faculties, capacities, and susceptibilities, is no evil: man needs no capacity, but that of surrendering himself to the will of God: and if he uses any of his faculties for any other purpose but to do that supposed will more effectually, he is better without them. This is the theory of Calvinism; and it is held, in a mitigated form, by many who do not consider themselves Calvinists; the mitigation consisting in giving a less ascetic interpretation to the alleged will of God; asserting it to be his will that mankind should gratify some of their inclinations; of course not in the manner they themselves prefer, but in the way of obedience, that is, in a way prescribed to them by authority; and, therefore, by the necessary condition of the case, the same for all.

No doubt Mill’s conception of liberty expounded in the treatise, though imperfect, has much to commend itself. And his description of Calvinism could certainly be interpreted to be a fair description. Must Christian submission necessarily oppose itself to liberty, or at least be supplemented with “pagan self-assertion”?

Human Nature

There is a different type of human excellence from the Calvinistic: a conception of humanity as having its nature bestowed on it for other purposes than merely to be abnegated. “Pagan self-assertion” is one of the elements of human worth, as well as “Christian self-denial.”

Liberty serves human nature; Calvinism opposes it. How can the two but oppose one another?

Mill here is playing fast and loose with his terminology, in more ways than one. First, he uses “human nature” in two radically different ways, and then by making the Calvinists out to equate them creates a false opposition between two doctrines. Mill argues as if human excellence and eternal virtue – the “Calvinistic human excellence” – were opposites of the same type: one assisting human nature, the other abnegating it. But human nature is not so simple as to be simply abnegated or assisted. Both Christian doctrine and liberty, as Mill understands the latter, oppose themselves to human nature as it currently exists. It is human nature to be complacent, for example; Mill celebrates the discomfort brought on by variety of circumstance. But each operates on a distinct plane of human nature in ways that are not mutually exclusive.

Human nature can achieve human excellence – temperance, energy, nobility of character, etc. – and Mill makes a strong argument that liberty is the surest path to these. But Christianity is not concerned with these, at least as such, for in themselves they carry no eternal merit. Christianity, and by extension Calvinism, is concerned with eternal virtue, which liberty (as well as oppression) is powerless to produce. Human excellence flows from eternal virtue, but no eternal virtue can flow from human excellence.

It should be obvious then that the sense in which Mill’s liberty operates on human nature is of a completely different kind than that in which the Spirit of God operates upon it. It is perhaps true that human excellence in the absence of eternal virtue is best cultivated in an environment of liberty. It is also true that those inhabited by the Spirit of God will exhibit human excellence regardless of their environment. Externally, it might seem that these two work the same result (barring, of course, differences as to what constitute human virtues). For Mill, that is enough. But for Calvinists, despite Mill’s perception, the question of externals is hardly even relevant.

Calvinism and Mill’s liberty then, far from being opposed on the question of human nature, are simply asking different questions using the same broad terminology. It is as Mill describes in chapter two, when two opinions holding half-truths come into conflict when they set up their respective halves to be the whole.

Submission and Authority

But there still remains the question of certain differences in what constitutes human virtue. Mill sets up a certain willfulness in the face of authority as a virtue, and construes Calvinism as holding obedience to instead be virtue. Painted with such broad strokes, how could the two not be opposed?

The error here is certainly more forgivable from the sheer prevalence of it. No doubt many Calvinists have argued in this way. But it is not an error peculiar to Calvinists. Catholics, Lutherans, and even Atheists have all partaken of it both in defense and offense: it is the error of assuming the authority of God is essentially a political authority, predicated on the imposition of punishment (I will not rehash that argument here – it is expounded in full in that article).

That assumption entails conversely that submission to God is essentially the same disposition as submission to the state. Having established that the authority of each operates differently in essence, the disposition of submission to each cannot be the same.

The authority of God, working through natural consequences, is submitted to only by his Spirit. The authority of the state, working through imposed punishment, is submitted to through fear. Godly submission is internal; stately submission external. To submit to God in the same way one would submit to the state is no faith at all. “Even the demons believe, and tremble.” Fear of punishment is not adequate to salvation: the Spirit of God must engage the affections. Conversely, to submit to the state in the same way one would submit to God is servility and idolatry, akin to Winston coming to love Big Brother at the end of 1984.

It is indeed rare that these distinct mindsets are properly separated. Perhaps it is true that one sort of submission conditions the same in other contexts. A skeptical mind is much more likely to be both irreligious and unpatriotic. There are also many devout Christians who have an equally devout love of country. I will not deny that a singular mindset likely feeds into both – but that singularity is faithful neither to the essence of Christianity nor Liberalism. It is no more fair to hold servility against Christianity than it is to hold irreligion against Liberalism.

One of the great marring flaws of Mill’s treatise is the persistent confusion of society with government. Though he does distinguish them explicitly at certain points, far more often “society” exercises the force of law over an individual. This error, his aside on Calvinism suggests, stems from a muddy idea of authority. The essential distinctions between the authority of God and the state, and between that of society and the state, are for the most part ignored, leading to the singularly rebellious spirit and tyranny of tolerance so prevalent among Mill’s leftist heirs.

But then, it seemed Mohler was aiming at a very wide target. He breaks down the objections to the doctrine into Biblical, theological, moral, and cultural objections. Specifically, he lists under the Biblical category:

Second, they argue that we misconstrue the nature and character of God. In particular, they say we misread Biblical texts dealing with divine wrath. Wherever Scripture references wrath, they say it is merely a natural consequence of sin. Sin brings about its own punishment. This redefinition of divine wrath is a recurrent theme. They read a text such as Romans 1 and suggest that Paul was saying there that sin simply comes with its own punishment. Wrath is being demonstrated or revealed as the necessary consequences of sin. Now, does sin bring its own consequences? Of course! Just ask someone who struggles with sin. Ask someone who has been victimized by sin. Ask the Apostle Paul. Sin, of course, does bring about its own consequences, but those are not the consequences we should most fear. The consequence to fear is the wrath of God poured out upon all unrighteousness. . . .

Fourth, they argue that we misconstrue divine punishment. They say that the result of breaking God’s law and covenant is alienation first and foremost; we are separated from God. True; we are in an alienated condition. However, in looking at the punishments that follow sin, they suggest that this is merely the necessary outpouring of consequences. They argue that divine punishment is simply allowing the natural world and the natural order God has put into place to work out its own consequences. The removal of God’s personal offendedness and his personal wrath poured upon sin greatly misconstrues the message of the Bible.

Hold on a minute – the “they” he’s writing against almost sounds like me at points. I concluded in God, Authority, and Authoritarianism that

Hell itself therefore, far from the final spite of a vindictive God, is the most natural of consequences.

I’m certainly no enemy of substitutionary atonement. Of all the rest of the objections Mohler answers, theological, biblical, moral, and cultural, I sympathize with exactly zero. His dismissal of “divine child abuse” claims could garner an amen! from my lips. However, on the quoted points, I have to assert: Hell as consequence is not incompatible with the doctrine of substitutionary atonement.

Let’s start by asking why it might seem the two are incompatible. First, substitutionary atonement requires a legal debt, which is legally enforced by the imposition of punishment. Debt doesn’t have natural consequences – they have to be imposed. And second, imagining the wrath of God as a natural consequence rather than an imposed punishment makes God seem wrathless and indifferent. Mohler hits on this in the last sentence of the quoted section above. A depersonalized and disinterested God doesn’t sound very Biblical.

Analogy and Reality

First of all, substitutionary atonement is an analogy to earthly power. God is construed as a political king whose right we have failed to honor. Therefore in his authority, he can either punish the offense, or arrange for its substitution.

This analogy is, of course, Biblical. The problem comes, like in other areas of theology, when we take the symbol for the thing in itself. The sacrificial system, for example, was instituted and commanded by God in the Old Testament, but the New Testament makes it clear that sheep blood was not efficacious to cleanse from sin. It pointed to the Cross – the Lamb of God, whose blood once and for all cleanses us from the final consequences of sin (it is for the Holy Spirit to cleanse us from the daily presence of sin). It was a symbol for a deeper reality – that a sacrifice is required for sin. Likewise, the legal debtor analogy cannot be extended beyond the point it is supposed to make. The legal terminology is a symbol (albeit a good and Biblical one) – the Cross is reality.

The point of legal atonement analogies in the Bible, then, is to illustrate that the consequences of sin are such that substitution is an acceptable way of avoiding them. What better analogy for that than the payment of a debt?

We overextend the analogy, however, when we try to make a strict categorical separation between the punishment for sin and the consequences of sin. The Bible speaks of both. Romans 1, for example – the passage Mohler expects atonement-deniers to cite – speaks not only of the consequences of sin (v. 24), but conscious, Godly punishment (v. 18). And significantly, the passage is speaking of the same thing in both places.

The reason the analogy breaks down here is because God’s authority is fundamentally not a political authority. He does not rule the universe in the same manner as a king rules his kingdom. Where a king rules by force, God rules by nature.

Now this does not depersonalize the wrath of God. If we worship a sovereign God, then it makes no sense to say that Hell is “simply allowing the natural world and the natural order God has put into place to work out its own consequences”. There is no “working out” apart from the active and meticulous ordinance of God. In this sense, it is certainly divine, conscious, and personal punishment. We cannot say Hell is “consequence and not punishment”: when we speak of the authority of God, punishment and consequence are one and the same.

However, in this sense, all negative effects of our actions count as divine punishment – even the things we normally consider consequences. The vicious cycle of sin on the soul described in Romans 1 is, as even Mohler seems to admit, a consequence of sin. And yet the passage also speaks of God actively “giving them up” to their sins.

To illustrate the sameness of the two, consider their opposites. The goodness of God must be a difference of degree, and not of kind, from any goodness we experience on earth. Every good thing flows from the goodness and grace of God. God himself is the fulfillment of every good, so we are assured that we won’t be missing anything in Heaven. In the same way, the vicious cycle of sin and depravity that we witness on earth is only different from Hell as a matter of degree. Hell is the end result and fulfillment of sin in the same way that God is the end result and fulfillment of the good we experience on earth. It is not the case that the cycle is consequence and Hell is punishment. No, both are punishment, and both are consequence, in equal measure. The categories become perfectly indistinguishable when we speak of divine action.

Anthropomorphizing God

It should be obvious then that speaking of Hell as consequence does not take away from its “punishmentness”; nor does it depersonalize the wrath of God. On the contrary, if we insist on a strict logical dichotomy between punishment and consequence – regardless of which side we come down on – we make God’s operation merely human.

To be sure, God speaks to us of his own operation in human terms. But, as Calvin explains, this is to “accommodate himself to our weakness”. Our easiest point of reference when speaking of Hell is anger and punishment. But we have already seen how the punishment analogy, and indeed any analogy to political power, fails when we apply it too strictly to God.

Anger likewise, when we speak of humans, is generally incited by a failure of expectations. This is why being deceived makes people angry. But can God be deceived? Are his expectations ever not realized? If God is sovereign and omniscient, we must conclude that God does not feel anger as we do. His wrath is not motivated by the same impulses ours might be. We cannot say what God does feel, or if “feel” is even the right term. But we need not know – who has known the mind of God? – for God has accommodated himself to our emotional categories, and his Word is sufficient for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.

Similarly, those who think of Hell as consequence but not punishment have to impugn the sovereignty of God by imaging the natural world operating separately from the ordinance of God. This allows them to think of God primarily relationally. God “desires” us, they say. But what is the desire of God? (That’s actually a complicated question) Can it ever fail to be realized? What does it mean for a perfect God lacking in nothing to “want” the company of humans? Though God indeed calls us friends (John 15:15) to accommodate our weakness, this relationship has many more facets than a friendship between two humans. God cannot “want” us, nor indeed anything, in the sense that we want things. To imagine so demeans the perfection and completeness of God.

Conclusion

To reiterate, given the way we use the two words, it is often helpful to describe Hell as consequence rather than punishment. However we cannot reject the idea of Hell as punishment, and certainly cannot reject the clear and foundational doctrine of substitutionary atonement. What we must reject is the anthropomorphization of God – the equation of divine rule with vulgar political rule, or of divine emotion with human emotion. There are, no doubt, certain important parallels – some even drawn out in the Bible! – which we can use to grow in understanding, and God certainly accommodates our weakness. But it is absolutely impermissible to use an analogy to limit the reality of God (I say this both of legal and relational analogies). God in Heaven is neither a human ruler nor a human friend, though he is indeed a ruler and friend so far as we are concerned.

It is useful at various times to describe the judgement of God both as punishment and as consequence. Both are correct, but neither captures the fullness of that judgement until we understand the nature of the sovereign rule of God. Error comes when we reject one paradigm in favor of the other: perhaps indeed worse, as Mohler has argued, when our rejection leads us to further reject core Christian doctrines. Nevertheless, our point of contention ought to be the substitutionary atonement itself, not the strict legal analogy.

In the midst of all the hubbub surrounding Rob Bell’s new book Love Wins, the guy writing for The Tenth Leper actually got a pre-release and read it, and posts a great analysis.

Bell’s style is less assertion, more questions which lead you to an answer. Some of the questions just sound like stock aesthetic hangups (“He asks if God has ‘created millions of people over tens of thousands of years who are going to spend eternity in anguish’ and, if so, how he could do or allow that ‘and still claim to be a loving God’”). But others reveal devastating inconsistencies with Christian pop soteriology (I quote from The Tenth Leper blog, since he quotes from the yet unreleased book):

And if there are only a select few, how do you become one of them? ”Chance? Luck? Random selection? Being born in the right place, family, or country? Having a youth pastor who ‘relates better to the kids’? God choosing you instead of others? What kind of faith is that? Or, more important: What kind of God is that?” (pp.2-3) . . .

Take the age of accountability for example. Some Christians believe that a child up to a certain age is not held accountable for their actions before God. Mr. Bell correctly says that a lot of people believe that age to be around twelve years old. But what if your child lives past that age and ends up not believing in Jesus, dooming themselves to hellfire for all eternity? . . . ”If every new baby being born could grow up to not believe the right things and go to hell forever, then prematurely terminating a child’s life anytime from conception to twelve years of age would actually be the loving thing to do, guaranteeing that the child ends up in heaven, and not hell, forever. Why run the risk?” (p.4) . . .

If Romans 10:14 is true, is our salvation in someone else’s hands? ”What if the missionary gets a flat tire?” Is someone else’s eternity my responsibility then? . . .

The list goes on for a couple more pages, but the point is made. For Bell, the traditional evangelical understanding of salvation seems to be fraught with difficulties. It’s just far too complicated. Every “simple” statement the Bible makes about how to get saved just leads to more questions.

Yes! I’ve argued using almost identical questions. Was my salvation really dependent on the weather the day the evangelist came out, or on his boldness, or on the fact that he washed his hands yesterday and didn’t get sick? It’s the old question, “What about the people who haven’t heard?”. It’s not an easy question, and we see Bell honestly struggling with it, which is certainly a better response than a lot of unthinking stock answers (or more usually, evasions). And as shocking as merciful infanticide sounds, he’s absolutely right: that’s the only logical conclusion if we believe in an age of accountability.

But this isn’t what has the blogosphere in a tizzy. No, that’s because of this:

Invoking the original language of the New Testament, he’ll argue his case that the punishment referred to here (better translated, he believes, as “correction”, or “pruning”, or “trimming”) doesn’t last forever in the way we understand the term “forever”.

Oh no! It’s easy to see why this has generated such a backlash in the Evangelical community. But his questions – and they are good questions – do seem to lead in that direction, don’t they?

Unfortunately, Bell takes the easy way out from his hard questions:

“What [Jesus] doesn’t say is how, or when, or in what manner the mechanism functions that gets people to God through him. He doesn’t even state that those coming to the Father through him will even know that they are coming exclusively through him.” (p. 156)

Ok, so we’ve shot holes through a certain understanding of salvation. Does that mean we abandon the whole issue? Certainly the topic is weighty enough to warrant digging deeper, rather than just throwing up our hands and exclaiming “This is hard!”.

What Bell’s questions lead us to reject is not the permanence of Hell, but the idea that faith is an act of the will. Bell marches right up to this point…

“If salvation is a free gift that “we cannot earn by our own efforts, works, or good deeds- and all we have to do is accept and confess and believe, aren’t those verbs? And aren’t verbs actions? Accepting, confessing, believing-those are things we do. Does that mean, then, that going to heaven is dependent on something I do? How is any of that grace? How is that a gift?” (pp.10-11)

…and then points his guns at the meaning of “forever”. But oh, this point can be so much more richly developed. John Stott notes in The Letters of John:

[1 John 5:1] shows clearly that believing is the consequence, not the cause, of the new birth.

Faith is not an act at all! There is no tension between act and gift: it’s totally and completely gift, “not of your own doing”. We are not saved because of faith, we have faith because we are saved! And with that, all of our questions suddenly become soluble. No one is saved according to the merit of an evangelist, but according to the inscrutable, ineluctable choice of God: “Neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth.” (1 Cor. 3:7)

Bell suggests, in so many questions, that we cannot at the same time preserve human agency and divine wrath. The contradictions and difficulties are just too great. It’s a realization which most people never come to. But alas, having come to that dilemma, Bell throws out the wrong one. And just one step from the doctrine of unconditional election, so clearly expressed in scripture. Unfortunately it seems unconditional election offends his sensibilities, seeing as he lumped it in with will accounts in the first quoted paragraph above. He makes a great and compelling argument, but points it at the wrong foe.

I won’t be so patronizing as to pray for Bell to see the light. Those prayers would be better said for those who haven’t even thought of the issues Bell raises, or see no contradiction between wrath and agency. Hopefully this book will cause many more to ask these hard questions, even if I hope they won’t blindly accept his conclusion. Bell asks all the right questions. But in the end, it seems what wins is just a human aesthetic of love.